I got a sneak peek at the newly restored Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. It looks straight out of the Gilded Age.
The hotel blends historic Gilded Age furnishings with modern luxuries for guests and residents.
Highlights include the restored Peacock Alley and Silver Corridor plus redesigned suites and condos.
They don't call the Waldorf Astoria New York "The Greatest of Them All" for nothing.
After an eight-year renovation that cost a reported $2 billion, the iconic hotel is finally set to reopen in September.
Furnishings dating back to the Gilded Age, such as ceiling murals that were part of the hotel's original location on Fifth Avenue, have been painstakingly restored by hand. Other parts of the landmark building have been updated with state-of-the-art luxuries, such as new four-bedroom condominiums with sale prices starting at $18.75 million.
I visited the Waldorf Astoria in July for a sneak peek of the hotel before it opened to the public. Take a look inside.
The Waldorf Astoria New York spans an entire block between 49th and 50th Streets in Midtown Manhattan.
The original Waldorf Astoria was located on 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue.
The Waldorf Hotel, owned by William Waldorf Astor, opened in 1893. His cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, then opened the rival Astor Hotel next door in 1897. The two hotels merged that same year, creating the first Waldorf Astoria with a walkway known as Peacock Alley connecting the buildings. It was knocked down in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building.
The new Waldorf Astoria opened in 1931 and stands at 47 stories tall.
The hotel is split into 375 hotel rooms and 372 residences.
The hotel's main entrances aren't open yet due to ongoing construction, so my tour began at one of the residential entrances.
Residents who live at The Towers at Waldorf Astoria use separate entrances and enjoy 50,000 square feet of amenities like a private fitness center and access to the exclusive Empire Club's offices and coworking spaces.
First, I toured a sample condominium residence, where prices range from $1.875 million for a studio to $18.75 million for a four-bedroom apartment.
The units can come furnished by interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot, or residents can furnish the condos themselves.
A case in the sales gallery displayed artifacts from the Waldorf Astoria's early years.
The display featured silver trays, glasses, uniform pieces, room keys, and a tin that once contained the Waldorf's rum-and-brandy-flavored fruit cake.
I got my first look at the new Waldorf Astoria hotel as we entered an elegant hallway leading to the lobby.
The space was furnished in rich colors, including plush red armchairs, dark wood tables, and decorative columns along the burnt-orange walls.
Walking into the refurbished Park Avenue lobby for the first time, I was blown away by its enormity and opulence.
The high ceilings and ornate windows created an expansive, open space that made me forget I was in the middle of Manhattan.
The lobby was decorated from top to bottom. Neoclassical murals were painted beneath the ceiling molding, and a mosaic in the center of the floor, titled "Wheel of Life" by French artist Louis Rigal, consisted of 148,000 hand-cut marble tiles.
Seating alcoves located throughout the lobby will host Yoshoku, a Japanese restaurant serving sushi and small plates.
We proceeded into Peacock Alley, featuring the famous 1893 World's Fair Clock purchased by John Jacob Astor IV.
Peacock Alley originally served as a corridor between the Waldorf Hotel and the Astoria Hotel. It was named for the way that members of high society promenaded and "peacocked" through in their best outfits.
At the center of the modern Peacock Alley is the 1893 World's Fair Clock, which was commissioned by Queen Victoria and purchased by John Jacob Astor IV for the original Waldorf Astoria location on 33rd Street. The hotel's original black marble columns were also restored during the renovations.
Peacock Alley featured singer Cole Porter's restored piano.
Porter lived at the Waldorf Astoria from 1934 until his death in 1964. It was at this piano that he wrote hits such as "Anything Goes" and "I've Got You Under My Skin."
The check-in and reception area was opened up as part of the renovations.
The hotel's original layout closed this area off from Peacock Alley, causing congestion. In the new floor plan, the check-in desks are situated in an open space complete with a new black marble fireplace made from the same type of stone as Peacock Alley's columns.
Stairs from the porte-cochère, where guests arrive, lead straight into the check-in area.
Guests arriving by car can leave their vehicle at the porte-cochère for valet parking.
The Waldorf Astoria's hotel room rates start at $1,500 per night and range from 570 to more than 5,000 square feet.
The hotel rooms were furnished by French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon. I toured a one-bedroom suite, which starts at $2,995 per night, according to the Waldorf Astoria's website.
The bathrooms feature luxurious amenities like heated marble tile floors, walk-in showers, and separate dressing areas.
Other luxury room perks include Nespresso machines, Frette linens, and Aesop skincare products.
I was surprised by how effectively the room's double-glazed windows blocked out noise from New York City's streets below.
Next, I visited Waldorf Astoria's Silver Corridor, which was inspired by the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
The mirrored hall, which serves as an event space, measures 1,995 square feet.
The ceiling featured murals by American artist Edward Emerson Simmons, which were restored from the original Waldorf Astoria location.
The Basildon Room featured an ornate ceiling and a marble fireplace mantel sculpted by British sculptor John Flaxman.
Measuring 1,649 square feet, the room can hold 189 people.
The ceiling art was sourced from the 18th-century dining room at Basildon Park Manor in England.
The small oil paintings by 18th-century artist Angelica Kauffman, which depict scenes from Dante's "The Divine Comedy," were removed from their original settings and reinstalled in the ceiling of the Basildon Room.
When I visited in July, other rooms that will host events were serving as holding spaces while workers prepared the hotel's finishing touches.
The only room I wasn't allowed to photograph was the Grand Ballroom, but here's what it looked like in its heyday.
At 9,990 square feet, this 1,500-capacity, three-tiered event and performance space has hosted star-studded gatherings such as the first Tony Awards ceremony, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, and President John F. Kennedy 's birthday gala.
The room was full of construction materials when I visited, so it wasn't quite ready for its close-up yet, but its grand architecture still remained jaw-dropping.
I ended my tour at Lex Yard, the Waldorf Astoria's signature restaurant.
As the birthplace of the Waldorf salad and, legend has it, Eggs Benedict, the Waldorf Astoria's restaurants have a storied history.
Chef Michael Anthony will oversee the new Lex Yard, which will serve farm-to-table American classics in an Art Deco-inspired space spanning two floors.
New York's "unofficial palace" blends historic Gilded Age furnishings and Art Deco architecture with modern luxuries for guests and residents.
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The Hill
a day ago
- The Hill
Facing facts about Trump and the jobs numbers
In announcing the firing of the government's chief labor statistician last week, President Trump condemned the works of Erika McEntarfer as 'phony.' McEntarfer was just the 16th commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics since the position was created by Congress in 1884 to keep track of unemployment during an ongoing depression of a very Gilded Age variety. The job is to produce consistent, reliable data that Congress and other agencies can use for setting their own policies. What we have turned it into, however, is some kind of political rhabdomancer, an oracle on whose divinations the results of elections supposedly hang. But, like most good governance, it's actually really boring. McEntarfer was confirmed by the Senate by a richly bipartisan vote of 86-8 to a four-year term that began in 2024. But there's no doubt that Trump was within his powers to fire her. All of the other counters of beans at the bureau are civil servants, but not the bean-counter in chief, who has always been a political appointee — which McEntarfer became only after more than 20 years in various statistical gigs as a federal worker bee. Until Friday, she managed the bureau and her name was on the reports, but the numbers are churned out by a hive of statisticians and researchers working in the old Post Office building next to Washington's Union Station. The deputy commissioner, civil servant William Wiatrowski, will again serve as acting commissioner, as he has twice before during vacancies. We'll see what Trump thinks of Wiatrowski and the data nerds' August numbers when they come out on the first Friday of September. The president has vowed to pick an 'exceptional replacement' for McEntarfer, and that is probably true. There will be many exceptions concerning whomever Trump sends to the Senate for confirmation to the post. In the meantime, if the August numbers are as glum as the rest of this summers', Trump may start firing his way through acting commissioners until he finds one who sees the 'great Republican Success' the president claims McEntarfer was concealing. But he can burn that bridge when he comes to it. For now, let's think about why Trump fired McEntarfer and what he meant by 'phony.' 'Days before the election, [McEntarfer] came out with these beautiful numbers for Kamala, I guess Biden-Kamala, and she came out with these beautiful numbers trying to get somebody else elected,' Trump told reporters Friday. 'Then, right after the election, she had an [$800,000] or $900,000 massive reduction — said she made a mistake.' The fact is that the single poorest employment report of McEntarfer's tenure was the one she published three days before the 2024 election, in which the bureau reported Nov. 1 that the economy had created only 12,000 new jobs in October, a worrisome sign for former President Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. There was indeed a revision to those numbers after the election: a substantial increase to 43,000, reflecting the bureau's conclusion that the fall hurricane season had distorted the overall jobs picture. It is true, though, that Trump did complain bitterly 10 weeks before the election about the long-term revisions to the bureau's 2023 numbers that concluded the economy had added more than 800,000 fewer jobs in the previous year than initially estimated under McEntarfer's predecessor. Insofar as jobs numbers — rather than actual jobs — affect the attitude of voters, McEntarfer's bureau had given Trump a gift. But Trump was more focused on the revision itself, not the report, writing, 'the Harris-Biden administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics.' If the Biden-Harris administration had been cooking the books, then why on earth would it announce such a thing during the height of the campaign, on Aug. 21, the third day of the Democratic National Convention? If Trump's goal was to knock the incumbent administration's economic policies, McEntarfer & Co. had just served up a very juicy pitch, but Trump largely ignored it in favor of the allegation of corruption. It is possible that Friday, Trump confused the August downward revision with the November report, and that he unknowingly conflated the two events to fit his preferred narrative. But whether it was a premedicated lie or self-deception isn't really the essential point. The episode shows us what Trump thinks about data in general. Whether it is election returns or economic reports, none of it can be trusted, unless it has been provided by 'his own people.' Thus we come to a fork in the road: Is it that Trump believes it is possible for data to be unhappy for him and accurate, but only if he chooses the people who collect the data, or, is it closer to his way of thinking that data are mostly phony and he just prefers to be the one in whose favor it is being rigged? If it is the former, that comes with its own problems. Once a leader has installed loyalists in charge of data gathering, those loyalists out of some combination of love, ambition and fear will be motivated to hide bad news. A government that loses the ability to tell itself the truth is doomed, with terrible consequences for its citizens. But what if it's the latter, and Trump doesn't put much stock in data as anything more than a tool for marketing, messaging and politics? This is the kind of thinking that might be behind asking an elections official to 'find' enough votes to overturn an election. If Trump assumes that the blue state election returns are phony, why shouldn't Republicans provide phony vote totals for his benefit? Whether it's the Georgia secretary of state, the chair of the Federal Reserve, his own vice president or the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if Trump assumes that all findings are the work of political malfeasance, why shouldn't they be malfeasing in his favor? Unhappy findings, therefore, can't be matters of fact or sincere interpretation, they can only be, as Trump would say, 'nice' or 'not nice.' Writing in 1942 about his recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War years before, George Orwell framed out how first Spain and then all of Europe had been plunged into hellish madness over the course of less than a decade. What he concluded wasn't that old saw that 'truth is the first causality of war,' but rather that the death of truth is part of what leads us to war. 'I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased,' he wrote. 'but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.' It's not that employment data aren't ever wrong, it's that in a functional republic, we believe that such data can be found through an imperfect, iterative process that is pointing at something real. If we abandon that idea, then all that's left is the party line. The would-be information czars of the COVID-era and the dis-disinformation apparatus that sprang up in response to the wilderness of online life, including that part of the wilderness planted by Trump himself, frequently devoted itself to fighting 'wrong' ideas and 'bad' opinions. It was often Orwellian in its own way, fact-checking subjective assessments. But the real fight for the future isn't about what people think, but rather what people believe can be known. We may already be living in a post-truth era, but God help us if we are beyond caring about facts.
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Travel + Leisure
30-07-2025
- Travel + Leisure
This Maui Resort Has the Biggest Spa in Hawaii, an Aquarium Bar, 7 Waterslides, and a Brand-new Nobu Restaurant
Grand Wailea The grounds are breathtaking, with gently sloped paths and bridges that take you past koi ponds and rushing waterfalls as you wander past a vast assortment of native plant life. There's a 1.5-mile beach walk that allows a glimpse of other luxury hotels—the Four Seasons and Fairmont Kea Lani in one direction, the Andaz in the other—with a mandatory stop at the Shops at Wailea, where you'll find everything from beachy souvenirs to outposts of Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. Sounds of pure delight come from the activity pool, where a 262-foot lava tube slide sends anyone taller than 48 inches down a three-story drop. From December to April, there's free entertainment on the beach courtesy of the thousands of humpback whales that migrate every year from Alaska to mate and give birth, and there's nothing like seeing a marine mammal the size of a school bus throw itself completely out of the water. You can stay in a private space called Napua, where you'll find four upgraded club-level floors with larger room and suites, the best ocean views, a lounge serving light breakfasts and cocktail snacks, and a concierge to manage your every need. It was the spa that first brought me to the Grand Wailea on Maui, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, years ago. As a fashion and beauty editor, I couldn't ignore all of the 'Top 10' lists with glowing reviews of the spa and its enticing mixture of elegance and serenity (or the 2011 Film 'Just Go With It' starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, which was filmed at the resort). Spa Grande delivered, calling me back to the hotel repeatedly for more than 20 years. When I read in 2019 that the spa was closing for an extensive renovation, I was nervous. I loved that spa. Whatever was intended for the renovation, logic told me my favorite elements would be lost. Because this was clearly a see-for-myself situation, I recently returned to the hotel. And the short answer? All is good. Very good, in fact. Sunset over the grounds. Patrick Kelley/Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort After a $55-million renovation, the Kilolani Spa reopened in early 2024 at 50,000 square feet—the largest in Hawaii, senior director of spa and wellness David Erlich told Travel + Leisure. A stunning hydrotherapy garden greets guests with hot and cold plunges, a welcoming hammam and spa version of the ice-bucket challenge. With its heart deep in Hawaiian culture, the spa's treatments are based on cycles of the moon (so a massage during a full moon will feature different products than one during a new moon). 'The programming constantly evolves,' Erlich told T+L. And so does the hotel. The entire property has undergone a total renovation, explained managing director JP Oliver, with everything from rethinking the guest rooms and public areas to developing several new restaurants. Bad news for me: I was too early for the opening of the Nobu by just a few weeks, but a walkthrough of the construction site just above the lobby all but guaranteed I'll be back next year. Plans for the renovation started in 2019, but not much happened during the eight months the pandemic closed the hotel, and construction started in late 2020. 'We took the guest rooms down to the studs,' said Oliver. Work took place gradually over the next few years, finishing in October of 2024. After the pandemic, 'the whole world was much busier than we thought it would be,' Oliver told T+L, and the hotel was hopping. Then, things slowed down after Maui's devastating wildfires in August 2023 when tourism to the island suffered as people cancelled trips. Now, with its emphasis on wellness and activities for the entire family, the hotel is back to being nearly full most of the time, according to Oliver. And I was able to see that what makes Grand Wailea so special is, thankfully, unchanged. The grounds are lush and welcoming, with gardens everywhere you turn. Head landscaper Jim Heid gives regular tours of the 40-acre property, pointing out his favorite native plants (orchids everywhere) and allowing guests to sample starfruit straight from the tree. Throughout the property, the gentle sound of waterfalls adds to the tranquility. A Fernando Botero Sculpture at the Botero Lounge. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort Equally impressive is the hotel's museum-worthy art, including a multi million-dollar collection of larger-than-life Fernando Botero sculptures in and around the lobby bar. Everywhere you turn, there's artwork to admire: A series of Fernand Léger paintings can be found near the shops, and an imposing statue of King Kamehameha guards the entrance. There's so much to say about my recent visit to Grand Wailea—most notably that it was too short! Here's my full review. The Rooms All the hotel's 877 guest rooms and 57 suites have a private lanai (balcony) with views of either the gardens or the ocean. Interiors in shades of beige and ivory with splashes of tropical colors are soothing. Even the most basic room is lavishly appointed, with a small refrigerator, Nespresso machine, walk-in shower and tub, and cushy bathrobe and slippers. The focus on art is evident, with each wing featuring different paintings. (I was especially fond of the huge print of swimmers awash in an endless ocean that hung in my bathroom). Suites have a sitting area with large-screen TV and an additional half bath, along with a spectacular bathroom featuring an oversized tub with an ocean view. For the ultimate in luxury, the Ho'olei complex on a hill overlooking the hotel has three-bedroom villas that can sleep six, with expansive lanais, full kitchens, and laundry facilities, and then there's the Napua rooms and suites with 'VIP comforts' located on the resort's private upper floors. Food and Drink It's difficult to pronounce Grand Wailea's signature restaurant, Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, but you can call it Humuhumu for short. Named for the native reef triggerfish, the restaurant is nestled under several thatched-roof structures with a dramatic circular aquarium bar housing some 400 salt-water fish gliding under your cocktail—try the Sunburnt Vacationer. People love the Wagyu strip steak, but dishes like Macadamia Nut Prawns or Ahi Coconut Ceviche capitalize a bit more on Island authenticity. While construction on Nobu was still going on, the resort's over-the-top breakfast buffet (omelet station, cheese and charcuterie, specials like quiche or frittata) took place here. Nobu, in a redesigned space soaring above the lobby, is now open with all the famous specialties on the dinner menu, like black cod miso and yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno. Other dining venues include Olivine, serving an Italian-inspired menu for lunch and dinner, Botero Lounge with live music and light bites, and, if you can't bear to come in for lunch, the Wailea Surf Haus on the beach. Also notable is the 24-hour Loulu, named for the only palm tree native to Hawaii. The café/market offers a light breakfast, snacks, a variety of sandwiches, pizza, and curated offerings from the Los Angeles-based organic grocer Erewhon, including the cult-favorite Cosmic Bliss, a plant-based soft serve. You can also dine with entertainment at the Grand Lūʻau on select dates. Activities and Experiences Aerial view of the resort and beach. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort It might be tempting to spend your days at the Grand Wailea lounging on the beach or by the pool, mudslide and novel in hand. But doing only that would be a mistake. Starting with early morning yoga classes on the beach, the hotel offers activities for everyone, among them stand-up paddle board and scuba lessons and morning outrigger tours (remember, eyes wide open if it's whale season). Cultural tours every Wednesday focus on Hawaii's history and traditions, while periodic garden tours highlight the native plants, while art tours show the impressive collection of paintings and sculptures. Embrace the culture by learning how to dance the hula, play the ukulele, or make a lei or a Kukui Nut bracelet. Or kick back and enjoy Keola (Hawaiian bingo). Periodic events include things like E Ala E, a morning chant on the beach that is said to make participants 'feel the mana (energy) of Maui flow through your body,' and the 'Awa Ceremony in celebration of the full moon led by a Hawaiian cultural practitioner. The hotel has a full gym, with daily fitness classes including yoga, cycling, and stretching, and every Sunday there's a sound bath experience with vibrations from crystal bowls, chimes, and a water drum to promote deep relaxation. If you're in need of retail therapy, shops near the lobby include several galleries, a Tommy Bahama, and the Cabana Vue designer boutique with luxe brands like Tom Ford and Chanel. All that said, you can't forget about the beach and pool. Attendants will set up chairs and umbrellas on Wailea Beach, and steps away, the hotel's swimming pool has nine separate areas, from 'baby beach' for the smallest kids, to seven water slides, to the adults-only Hibiscus Pool with 2.2 million individual tiles. Ok, time to go for the mudslide. The Spa Interior of the hammam at the Kilolani Spa. Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort The spa experience starts immediately after check-in, when guests participate in the welcome ritual by dipping their fingers in salt water, flicking it over their shoulders, and concentrating on their intentions. Guests are encouraged to come early to spend time in the hydrotherapy garden (complimentary with any service, or you can buy a two-hour pass for $125) before heading upstairs for treatments. The spa menu is incredible. The Lomilomi massage is considered a Hawaiian healing art, and there are multiple options of facials. But the specialties are the signature rituals, which draw on the moon cycles or local herbal medicine and include bodywork, herbal wraps, and mindfulness practices for ultimate relaxation. You can also book astrology readings or a session to explore your auras and chakras. At The Biostation, an on-site healthcare facility, you can recover from overindulging (whether in the sun or those darn mudslides) with IV nutrient therapy and get hormone therapy and med spa services. A full- service salon offers nail and hair care. Wellness diehards will want to check out the new retreats: three- and five-day programs that include spa treatments, private fitness sessions, and IV nutrient therapy at The Biostation, among other things. Guests will stay in one of the 11 new wellness rooms that come equipped with massage guns, white noise machines, and meditation goggles. Family-friendly Offerings Sitting on my eighth-floor lanai around sunset, I had fun watching the parade of multi-generational family groups—often decked out in matching Hawaiian prints—heading toward the evening's luau. The festive presentation with traditional dances and food is a must in Hawaii, and it's safe to say no children will be bored at the Grand Wailea, where the pool will keep them entertained for hours and many of the craft and cultural activities are geared to kids. The hotel recently opened its revamped child center, Keiki Club, for kids aged 5 to 12. General manager Wendle Lesher called it an 'immersive experience,' stressing that the program does not keep kids confined to a room. They will be all over the property, he told T+L, exploring the gardens or cooking up something with a chef. Teens will gravitate to the Cave, another new space, billed as 'an immersion into the Megaverse.' Traditional game room activities like ping pong and darts share the space with virtual reality pods offering high-tech 4D games. Upon check-in, kids are given a Grand Passport, which serves as a map for all the educational activities they can find throughout the property. And if parents need a night out, the hotel will facilitate babysitting. Accessibility and Sustainability From its early days, the Grand Wailea stressed accessibility because one of the original planners had a son with disabilities. Ramps all over the property are gentle enough for wheelchairs and walkers, and there are accessible rooms in every category. One unique feature is the water elevator (a kid favorite), which was first created to help the planner's son get to the upper and lower pool levels. Similarly, the resort stresses sustainability in virtually every aspect of operations. No single-use plastic water bottles are sold, and you won't find plastic in takeout containers either. Food scraps go to local farmers for animal feed and more than 80 percent of produce comes from local farms. Drought-resistant plants dot the landscape, many of them indigenous to the island, and a rooftop aviary not only aids in pollination but provides honey for restaurants and spa treatments. Location The Grand Wailea is on Maui's south side and it's only 17 miles from the airport. Despite this proximity, renting a car is still necessary if you want to fully appreciate the wonders of Maui. You don't want to miss the awe-inspiring sunrise at Haleakala, one of the world's largest dormant volcanoes, or the occasionally harrowing road to Hana, which will take you past black sand beaches and magnificent waterfalls. I love driving up Haleakala Highway, stopping for a tour of O'o Farm or Surfing Goat Dairy. Another fun stop is a visit to the small upcountry town called Makawao, known for its charming galleries and a bakery famed for the doughnuts called malasadas (but be warned, they often sell out before noon.) Some of my favorite restaurants on the planet are on Maui, too, most notably Mama's Fish House, where you need to make reservations way in advance (like months!). And, of course, Maui has no shortage of beaches you might want to visit. The Grand Wailea hotel is part of Hilton Honors (I booked my three-night stay for just over 300,000 points. If I could have stayed one night longer, I would have received a fifth night free). American Express Fine Hotels + Resort offers also include a fifth night free as well as daily breakfast for two and a $100 credit. Nightly rates at Grand Wailea Maui, a Waldorf Astoria Resort start from $70, but keep in mind prices vary by season and day of the week. Every T+L hotel review is written by an editor or reporter who has stayed at the property, and each hotel selected aligns with our core values.
Yahoo
30-07-2025
- Yahoo
As the 'Tariff Man,' Trump is creating the Second Gilded Age
Count on one thing: if Mark Twain, the famed American author of 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn,' were alive today, he would certainly have written a novel about Donald Trump. After all, his 1873 novel 'The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today' distinctly caught a 19th-century version of our Trumpian moment, tariffs and all. 'They want me to go in with them on the sly,' says Colonel Sellers, the anti-hero of that novel. Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, the colonel explains to his wide-eyed dinner guest how they would 'buy a hundred and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri…and then all of sudden…Whiz! the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin…profit on the speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!' With Twain's uncanny insight into the American character, his novel presaged the quarter-century to follow so accurately that, in the end, it lent its name to the 'Gilded Age,' that era of rapid industrialization and rising robber-baron fortunes. Ripped from two centuries of Puritan moral moorings by an 'inflamed desire for sudden wealth,' the novel's archetypal American families are caught in a 'fever of speculation' that sends them scrambling across the continent in a frenzied search for jackpot profits. With money then breeding its own morality, the era's capitalist excess naturally begat Trumpian-style corruption. When unpaid wages stopped the construction of his railroad out West, Twain's character Colonel Sellers sent the project's chief engineer to the head office in New York City to find out what had happened to the missing money. 'The matter is simple enough,' the company's president explained matter-of-factly to the astonished engineer. 'A Congressional appropriation costs money. A majority of the House Committee, say $10,000 apiece — $40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same each — say $40,000; a little extra to one or two chairmen of two such committees, say $10,000 each — $20,000; and there's $100,000 of the money gone.' 'It is a time,' he wrote, 'when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.' Looking at contemporary America through Twain's somber vision can teach us something significant about our own time that has so far eluded the mainstream media — particularly the profound political implications of President Trump's wild global tariff regime. Those duties on foreign imports will not just raise prices and stoke inflation, as the media has indeed been telling us, but all too crucially undercut the fiscal foundations of a middle-class American society that we've known for more than a century, creating a new Gilded Age of rising private fortunes — in our time, billionaires — and deepening social inequality. And with Donald Trump in mind, let's take a little trip through a history that's anything but Tom Sawyeresque. Cycles of Change Give Twain full credit: When writing that novel, he also intuited that the economic juggernaut driving his Gilded Age would come crashing down in what proved to be the devastating panic of 1893. The country had indeed suffered 11 previous panics, most of them regional or relatively short-lived. This one would be different. As New York banks held fire sales of assets to meet a cash crunch, some 340 banks nationwide simply suspended operations, while industrial output shrank by 15% and unemployment hit an unprecedented 19%. Adding to the difficulties of workers, the McKinley Tariff of 1890, named after then-representative — and future president — William McKinley, had imposed record-high duties of 50% on imports and so raised the price of many basic consumer goods, which should sound all too familiar in the age of Trump. The panic then became a full-blown, four-year depression that sent thousands of the unemployed, then called Coxey's Army, marching on Washington to demand redress from Congress. Not only was that panic an economic crisis of unprecedented severity, but it was also the first in a boom-and-bust cycle that has marked America's unbridled capitalism up to the present moment — with each boom producing spectacular private wealth and each bust fostering abject public misery and mass reform movements. Like Icarus, whose wings of wax carried him too close to the sun, the U.S. economy sometimes flies so high that its wax wings melt. The ensuing crash is so searing, immiserating so many for so long that it can inspire sustained movements for change. The severity of the protracted 1893 depression that ended the Gilded Age sparked myriad calls for social change and led to the Progressive Era, during which labor unions organized workers, the NAACP started its struggle for civil rights and women marched for suffrage. Investigative reporters called 'muckrakers' also began publishing exposés of financial power and political corruption in mass-circulation magazines like McClure's and Collier's Weekly, setting an agenda for political reform. In major cities, middle-class reformers opened settlement houses for poor immigrants, enacted housing codes to ban cold-water tenements and set up free public schools. At the state level, progressives like Wisconsin governor Robert La Follette battled the railroad monopolies that gouged farmers desperate to get their crops to market. Meanwhile, at the national level in 1913, Democratic reformers in Congress slashed the country's high tariffs, long a regressive tax on working-class consumers, replacing them with a progressive income tax whose top rate was then 7% on incomes over $500,000. Since the federal government had long used tariffs as its prime source of revenue, Progressive era legislators fully grasped just how fundamentally regressive they were, and fought successfully to cut the tariff rate from President McKinley's 29% in 1899 to just 6% by 1917. Typically, the import duties that refiners in Brooklyn and Philadelphia paid on raw Cuban sugar would be passed on to consumers as higher prices. And clearly, the cost of a cup of sugar then took a far more significant slice out of a worker's wages than it did from the kitchen budget of a millionaire's chef. Requiring those who had the least to pay the most was a glaring economic injustice that would inspire progressive reformers to fight tariffs with an impassioned intensity that seems almost incomprehensible today. The Roaring '20s But all that momentum for change stalled when, in 1917, the United States entered World War I and then segued to a postwar decade of speculative frenzy. At war's end in 1918, Forbes magazine published its first ranking of the country's richest men, with oil baron John D. Rockefeller then America's first and only billionaire, followed by 29 millionaires (whose fortunes, corrected for inflation, would make them billionaires today): Industrial tycoons like Andrew Carnegie (steel), J. Ogden Armour (meatpacking), Henry Ford (autos), Daniel Guggenheim (mining) and Pierre du Pont II (chemicals). After the stock market started roaring in the 1920s, however, it minted hundreds of new millionaires, while sales of cars, telephones, radios and appliances boomed. Between 1921 and 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average for shares on the New York Stock Exchange surged by 600%. As a parallel tide of political repression swept the country, American Legion veterans broke up socialist rallies, a young J. Edgar Hoover rounded up radicals for deportation and bloody race riots swept Chicago and Washington, D.C. While Republican conservatives took control of Congress and the White House, a revived Ku Klux Klan ran the legislatures of a half-dozen states, lobbied Congress to enact immigration restrictions and presided over some 400 lynchings of African-Americans. The Depression Decade of the 1930s The stock market that came in like a roaring lion at the start of the 1920s went out like a bleating lamb at decade's end. On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, it suddenly dropped 13%, lost another 12% on Black Tuesday and kept sliding into the summer of 1932, losing 90% of its value in a fall so steep it wouldn't reach that peak again until 1954. By the time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, the nation was in dire straits. About 25% of the workforce, or some 13 million people, were unemployed — with thousands of 'hobos' riding the rails, long lines snaking outside soup kitchens and shanty towns (dubbed 'Hoovervilles' after the indifferent president who had preceded FDR) huddled outside cities large and small. In the industrial northeast, factories shut down. In the Great Plains, thousands abandoned their farms in the country's 'dust bowl' and headed for California. So deep and desperate was the Great Depression that President Roosevelt had ample public support to enact a 'New Deal' of unprecedented socio-economic reforms, creating nothing less than the modern federal government. To provide work for the unemployed, FDR formed the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration that mobilized nearly nine million people to build 8,000 parks, 75,000 bridges and 650,000 miles of roads. Private sector workers won the right to form unions and strike under the National Labor Relations Board, largely ending the union-busting and goon violence of decades past. Since the country had no form of retirement savings, FDR formed the Social Security Administration in 1935 — which currently sends benefits to 66 million Americans. To fully electrify the economy, the New Deal dotted the U.S. with massive hydroelectric projects like the Fort Peck Dam and delivered cheap power to farms through the Rural Electrification Administration. To make air travel affordable, the Roosevelt administration built 800 airports nationwide, notably LaGuardia Airport in New York City. To end the bank runs that periodically wiped out customers' deposits, his Banking Act of 1933 created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to enforce restrictions on banking speculation, and a year later formed the Securities and Exchange Commission to protect ordinary investors from fraud. As the New Deal raised the tax rate for the top income bracket from 79% to a historic high of 94% by 1945, the share of all U.S. income earned by the richest 1% fell from a peak of 24% in 1928 to just 10% after World War II — and it would remain there until 1980. That change would be foundational for the middle-class democracy that many still regard as archetypally American. In sum, by the time the New Deal was done in 1945, the Roosevelt administration had brought high-flying U.S. capitalism down to earth, with regulations that curbed speculative excess, while preventing spectacular crashes. A New Gilded Age As the Cold War drew to a close during the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan advanced a conservative agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, sparking the start of a new Gilded Age that, over the next 30-plus years, would produce a level of economic inequality not seen for nearly a century. That era also coincided with a succession of financial crises that could have sparked serious economic depressions had they not been constrained by the regulatory mechanisms the New Deal had put in place. By slashing the tax rate on the highest incomes from 70% to just 28%, President Reagan catalyzed a steady climb in private wealth that would continue unchecked for decades to come. By 2007, the richest 1% were already earning 24% of the nation's income, putting them right back where they had been in the 1920s. Just as railroads were the iconic industry of the original Gilded Age, so the Internet and its corporate spin-offs became the prime driver of our current era of excess. The release of software developer programs like Mosaic combined with a sharp increase in U.S. households with a personal computer — from just 15% in 1990 to 35% by 1997 — became the prime ingredients for the 'dot-com bubble' of the late 1990s. Growing numbers of Americans started shopping at searching on Google and booking travel online at Expedia. As the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened up the broadcast spectrum and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 cut capital gains taxes on stock transactions, the Nasdaq stock exchange, which features tech listings, rose by 400% in a five-year frenzy of speculative trading for almost any stock with '.com' in its name. Adding fuel to that blazing fire, in 1999 President Bill Clinton encouraged Congress to repeal the New Deal's Banking Act of 1933, allowing financial speculation through the merger of retail and investment banking. In March 2000, the dot-com bubble finally burst, and the Nasdaq stock index started a sustained fall that virtually wiped out the previous decade's gains. Over the next two years, markets were also shaken by serious scandals after company officers falsified returns to feed the market frenzy, bankrupting a half-dozen major corporations, including WorldCom, the country's second-largest telephone company; Enron, a top energy corporation with revenues of $100 billion and Adelphia, a prominent cable television provider with over two million subscribers. To correct what one leading law firm called 'a broader culture of greed and deception that had taken root in the corporate world,' Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 that tightened financial regulations to protect investors from systemic fraud. Nonetheless, an even greater panic soon followed. Freed from the New Deal Banking Act's restraint on speculation, investment banks began engaging in predatory lending of subprime mortgages and aggressive marketing of mortgage-backed securities, producing a profit-taking craze that came crashing down in the Great Recession of 2007-2009. As the country's fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed and its fifth-largest, Bear Sterns, was liquidated in a 'fire sale,' the financial system trembled at the brink of collapse. Recognizing the seriousness of the crisis, Congress quickly authorized corporate bailouts funded by a $700 billion appropriation under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. By the time the Great Recession ended in mid-2009, unemployment had doubled to 10% and the Dow Jones Average had fallen by 50%. But the country had indeed been spared another Great Depression. The Advent of Donald Trump During those 30 years of boom and bust, however, one trend remained remarkably steady: the rich just kept getting richer. The number of global billionaires listed by Forbes would increase tenfold from 291 in 1992 to 2,781 in 2024, with a total wealth of $14.2 trillion. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Forbes included Donald Trump among them, estimating his wealth at $4.5 billion. In past periods of conservative Republican rule, Congress and the White House served the interests of the richest 1%, whether industrialists or Internet tycoons. But in 2016, for the very first time, the American people put a genuine billionaire in the White House and, to nobody's surprise, he soon made it clear that his only consistent concern was serving the interests of his peers. In the first year of his first term, in fact, Trump enacted the 2017 tax cuts that the New York Times called 'the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades.' By cutting the corporate tax rate from 39% to 21%, reducing the top individual income tax rate from 39.6% to 37% and doubling the size of estates exempt from being taxed to $11.2 million, those Trump tax cuts, economists found, produced a marked increase in 'after-tax income for high-income households.' Indeed, the bottom 20% of wage earners saved just $60 each, while the upper 1% gained $51,000 each and the top 0.1% at least $193,000. Yet even that landmark legislation would pale before the inequitable impact of Trump's tax policies in his second term in office, which all too literally sought to overturn the fiscal foundations of the Progressive Era reforms that had shaped American middle-class society for more than a century. If we combine the social impact of his recent 'Big Beautiful' budget bill, which extends the 2017 tax cuts, with his skyrocketing tariffs, Trump seems to be trying to undo the landmark tax legislation of 1913 by reducing or replacing the progressive income tax with tariff revenues that are really a regressive tax on the poor. When the budget's tax cuts for the rich are combined with his escalating tariffs that are bound to raise prices for ordinary consumers, those twinned policies are guaranteed to produce a massive transfer of wealth to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, creating an ever steeper version of social inequality that is fast fostering a new Gilded Age — and the economic disasters that are bound to go with it. Apart from his trade war with China, in his first term Trump actually had little impact on tariffs. By the time he left office in 2021, he had raised the average import duty only incrementally from 1.4% to 2.8% — a far cry from the record 50% rate of the 1890 McKinley Tariff, and so still an insignificant factor in both federal revenues and the average American's cost of living. In his inaugural address last January, however, Trump praised his distant predecessor, saying, 'President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman — and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal.' In a Rose Garden ceremony on his April 2 'Liberation Day,' Trump ordered record-high tariffs for all the world's nations, with duties of 50% on imports from Lesotho and 84% on those from China. Then, in an interview with Fox News on April 15, the president suggested 'there is a chance that the money from tariffs could be so great that it would replace' the income tax. As the average import duty started climbing to 15%, his trade adviser Peter Navarro projected that Trump's tariffs could raise $600 billion in revenues, or more than a third of the $1.6 trillion in individual income taxes the IRS collected in 2024. During the four-month blitz of tariff orders that followed, the Trump White House has insisted on the fiction that other countries will simply pay those import duties. After proclaiming himself a 'Tariff man,' during the 2024 election campaign Trump told his rallies that 'a tariff is a tax on a foreign country…A lot of people like to say it's a tax on us. No, no, no, it's a tax on a foreign country.' In May, when Walmart's CEO exposed the transparent falsity of that statement by stating, 'Higher tariffs will result in higher prices,' an apoplectic president told the company to 'EAT THE TARIFFS.' In mid-July, when Trump announced another round of tariffs that were to reach a McKinleyesque level of 50%, a White House spokesman repeated that exculpatory falsehood, saying: 'The Administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will be borne by foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy.' Rising Resistance With surprising speed, Americans are starting to see through such sophistry and resistance to the Trump administration is rising. Despite his repeated denials, a Gallup poll taken in April found that 89% of all Americans believe that 'higher tariffs will result in… paying more for products.' And in late June, as Trump's 'Big Beautiful' budget bill neared legislative approval with massive cuts to health care for millions of Americans, a Quinnipiac University poll found 55% of the country opposed the bill and only 29% supported it. Those polls reflected a growing opposition to Trump's policies. In April, his then-ally Elon Musk poured a record-breaking $25 million into the election for the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, but the opposing Democratic candidate still won a stunning double-digit victory. In June, five million Americans in 2,200 cities and towns across the country marched in anti-Trump 'No Kings' rallies, which added up to the largest single day of mass demonstrations in U.S. history. After only six months of Trump's term, it is still not clear whether his erratic economic policies — disrupting supply chains, creating labor shortages from mass deportations and inducing record inflation — will inflict sufficient social pain to inspire a sustained movement for change. But one thing is already quite clear: Without such mass protests and a determined democratic opposition at the ballot box, the Trump administration will persist with a tax and tariff policy aimed at creating the sorts of social inequity and economic privilege not seen since Mark Twain's original Gilded Age. Consequently, the grim economic results down the line are painfully predictable. The post As the 'Tariff Man,' Trump is creating the Second Gilded Age appeared first on
